


Slow Moon

by nntkiwff



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst?, Blended Canons - in a way, Canon-typical mentions of suicide and substance abuse, Ch2 Compliant, Dead Stanley Uris, Fix-It, Richie Tozier's Deadlights Vision, borrowing from the book, post ch2, the gdoc for this project is called grief.doc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26316412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nntkiwff/pseuds/nntkiwff
Summary: There are only six fortune cookies. Six little slips of paper.Guess Stanley Could Not Cut It.As Bev slides the last piece into place the message sinks in and it cuts like a knife. Barely remembering who in the ever-loving fuck Stanley even is, Richie feels his heart turn to lead and sink down into his shoes. The feeling reminds him of the day he found out that his dad died, and the insanity of grieving a stranger so intensely makes him feel untethered. Crazed.A deadlights fic.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	Slow Moon

**Author's Note:**

> "The slow moon hangs its beam; I shake my head, wishing and cursing; Love has me haunted, hunted to this place;"  
> ―Theodore Roethke

_Since this, I've grown up some different kind of fighter_

_And when the darkness comes, let it inside you._

* * *

It’s a hollow play for years and years and years and years, and then there’s a call from Mike Hanlon. From Derry. And then it’s a headache, a mouthful of vomit from the fire escape, and a kind of comforting divorce from reality. Looking up from the script at last, he stares out at a crowd who’ve gathered to hear him tell lies and thinks: _oh, fuck me._

Crazy how easy it is to give up the ghost. To blow your life away.

Then it’s a Xanny’d plane ride from Illinois to Maine and a half-real car ride, which gets more real by the second until that second he crosses the border into Derry, _Derry Derry Derry_

_\- I gotta get the fuck out of here, this place is a death sentence for-_

and the memories tumble in, a lifetime of them; the friends he’d forgotten just as well as the bullies. The vague outline of Mike in his mind snaps into vivid focus the moment he crosses the town line. Then, too, come the rest of them: Bill Denbrough, Ben Hanscom, Bev Marsh, Stanley Uris, and Eddie Kaspbrak. Their names and faces fill out in his mind like a song he’s not heard in forever but to which he can still sing along; intro, verse, bridge, and chorus etched into his soul. The Lucky Seven. The best friends he ever had, the only people who always had his back, back when it needed to be had, and it did, the way the lot of them were always getting chased around by -

\- _don’t think of it, oh, don’t think of It-_

Henry fuckin’ Bowers and his gang. A certified psycho, that kid had been, always itching to sink a fist into Richie’s cheek or chin or gut, looking to split a lip or box an ear. How many times had they broken his glasses? Those coke-bottle lenses he used to wear, the ones he ditched in college for something a little more modern. God, how long had it been since he thought about any of this? Twenty years? More? 

The sun is setting as he pulls up to the townhouse. Inside, he dumps his shit on the bed in the room assigned to him and takes a quick shower, throws up twice more. Fifteen minutes later it’s night and he’s on the road again, barely paying attention to the GPS he’d calibrated perfunctorily upon his arrival - he knows exactly where he’s going. Derry hasn’t changed a bit. He finds the plaza, parks, gets out onto shaky legs. Spots two people he’s never seen before hugging in the distance, and recognizes them immediately.

It’s nice, then. It’s _nice_ , to see his friends. It’s nice, it’s 

_\- impossible, fucking impossible, how the fuck could I forget them?-_

a feeling almost like relief, in the parking lot and the restaurant. Very close but not quite, an almost that peels back every time he glances over the empty seat next to him towards Eddie, Edward fuckin’ Kaspbrak, who looks back with fire and fury and overwhelming familiarity. 

Richie’s not the only one to have forgotten. They spend the better part of an hour catching up on the facts. Eddie went to NYU for statistics, he says, and has lived in New York since. He’s trying to start a family. A memory drifts to the forefront of Richie’s mind: a goodbye on the side of the road, outside what had always been the Kaspbrak house, and the tears that he’d held back then burning his eyes for months afterwards. After Sonia took Eddie and left Derry, the house stood empty for years. 

Beverly didn’t go to college but she’s been in New York just as long as Eddie has; they gasp and laugh about it, talk New York traffic and hotspots, discuss the odds that they’d walked right past one another once or multiple times. Underneath the novelty, Richie thinks it’s really not so funny. The vaguely haunted look under Eddie’s smile tells Richie he feels the same.

Ben went to Cambridge. He’s an architect, and a renowned one. He reveals upon questioning that he lives in Nebraska, tells them with pride that he built his own house out there and that it’s a beautiful state, really, though the winters are a little harsh - and when Richie asks

“What? Why the fuck would you build your house in fuckin’ Nebraska? The fuck is in Nebraska?”

he laughs and says, “I don’t know, Rich. Felt right at the time, I guess.” And everyone nods like that makes sense. 

Bill 

_\- pedals fast enough to beat the devil, calls out Hi-yo, Silver, away-_

dropped out of college, he tells them, with a sly smile that is equal parts self-effacing and proud. Couldn’t get along with his writing instructors, he says. Turns out he didn’t need them anyways. The agreeable murmur that goes around the table says: Bill Denbrough was always destined for greatness. It says eat your heart out, academia. It says _that’s our Billy_. 

Richie gives his own run-down, when it’s his turn: school for about a year at UCLA, poli-sci, a considerably less dramatic dropping-out story. His career blossomed out of Chicago, and he’s been jetting back-and-forth from Beverly Hills to Chi-town ever since, a staple of the comedy scene across the wide swath of America. Ben tells him he’d been a fan in the early days, which sends a groan around the table but fills Richie with a warmth that has nothing to do with his third rum and coke. He’d dropped off of Ben’s radar around the time of his second special, Ben says, which elicits a vicious little snort from Eddie, who says his wife _hates_ Richie’s comedy but doesn’t speak for himself.

After that Richie’s mind wraps suddenly and entirely around the word _wife,_ so he neglects to mention that his second special is the same time he’d hired his ghost-writers, the same time he’d realized his gayness wasn’t simply going to vanish into the night, and since there was no way in Heaven or Hell that he would ever write a joke about being gay... well. He decided to outsource.

Mike has the least to say. He’s lived on the outskirts of Derry his entire life. He became the town librarian. He never left for more than a day; scared that he, like them, would forget. That there would be no one left to remember. There’s a strange quality to his face when he smiles around the table, alluding to something more, something none of them are quite ready to address just yet. Richie has the feeling of chasing a high, staving off the inevitable, like the sixteenth key-bump of the night in 2002 when that shit was still cool. He orders another six shots for the table and challenges the only friends he’s ever had to a round of blowjobs.

The empty chair among them rings like bells throughout, like a neighbour’s smoke alarm, ignored until the smoke pours under your own door - the _feelings_ make him drink with reckless abandon, in a way that he’ll regret later, pulling words from the depths of him as though not from _him_ at all but from this person he’s forgotten to be for the last two decades. 

And then finally, after all the delaying that can possibly be done, the simmering truth is laid upon the table. The reason they’ve gathered, the reason they’ve forgotten. There is Eddie’s shuddering breath - 

_“Oh, the fucking clown -”_

and the fear. Sobering as an ice bath, sobering like crashing his bike at sixteen while shitfaced - bleeding through the knees of his jeans, bleeding down the left side of his face, lifted abruptly from the vodka haze. He’d forgotten that. He’d seen that scar near his hairline every day and never even thought to wonder _now, where’d that come from?_

He knows now. Now he knows too much. 

All hell breaks loose. There are six fortune cookies. Six little slips of paper. 

_Guess Stanley Could Not Cut It._ As Bev slides the last piece into place the message sinks in and cuts like a knife. Barely remembering who in the everloving fuck Stanley even _is,_ Richie feels his heart turn to lead and sink down into his shoes. The feeling reminds him of the day he found out that his dad died, and the insanity of grieving a stranger so intensely makes him feel untethered. Crazed.

Drunk and terrified, the six of them argue in the parking lot, which is strangely and utterly deserted. While Mike begs them to listen, and while they shout him down, Eddie circles like a rabid dog. His energy is immutable as ever, his mouth running, his hands chopping through the air as though they are still in 1989. He raises his hand when Richie looks among them for allies, and it deepens an overwhelming ache which threatens to consume his whole heart. It takes his terror and doubles it. It makes him desperate to flee.

Having already decided to fuck off as soon as possible, he’s making conclusions about love and his love life when Stan’s wife answers the phone to confirm what, deep down, he already knows. 

“Other people are going to die, Richie,” Ben pleads, ever the bleeding-heart, ever the big softy. 

Trying desperately not to think of Stan, not to think at all, he says: “Other people die every day, man, we don’t owe this town shit!”

And he drives away with Eddie following, knowing that that’s how he’d like it to end. After all the fear he’s lived with, different but always the same, after years and years of hiding, he’d love to believe that he deserves this: one victory, one sacred thing in his passengers seat. But there’s an empty chair and a crimson bathtub facing one another in the now bright-lit room of his mind, a reminder that no one in this story gets what they deserve. 

* * *

It goes like this: he does not drive away with Eddie. 

They make it as far as the Townhouse, second floor, an agreement to meet in the lobby in five minutes and he watches Eddie’s receding back up the next flight of stairs until a chill runs up his spine. He turns to fetch his yet-unpacked duffel from his room, sweaty hands sliding over the door handle as he lets himself in and then back out. 

Then, of course, it’s Beverly and Ben having out their emotions in the dining room. He thinks a little while later that his demise was _lingering._ Leaning against the bar like any of it makes sense, listening to everyone _deliberate._ Mike and Bill slip in quietly while Beverly predicts their collective doom and somehow the tide turns - while the panic continues to creep through each and every one of Richie’s atoms, suddenly he’s agreeing to stay, to see this shit out, to _fight_. 

Already drunk he pours himself a drink from the bar, and then another. One by one everyone trails off to their beds to rest for what is to come, until it’s just him and Bill and Mike, who barely look away from one another. Eventually he finds his bleary way to his room and falls asleep with his shoes on - not because he’s too drunk to take them off, but because he’s afraid - deathly afraid - that he may need to run for his life in the night. 

He dreams of pain, a broken arm and a clown. 

* * *

  
  


In the daylight he plods alone through memory after memory at Mike’s behest, even though he wants nothing more than to go back to the townhouse, go back to sleep, to follow Eddie, to make sure he’s okay, to get in his car, to drive away. He wants to do anything other than this: show up at the Arcade where he spent a hundred lonely hours wishing Bill Denbrough liked him more and better; see a walking dead man in the park like a shitty fucking metaphor; run like he hasn’t run in years from a stupid motherfucking floating homophobic terror clown. 

He promised, so he does it all. The panic. The fear. The misery. The longing. 

But a fucking promise only stretches so far. A thirteen year old only has so much information. A coward only has so many goddamn spoons. Richie Tozier has a breaking point, and it’s never ever been too far off. 

It doesn’t matter, really, if leaving means that he’s going to die, because staying means the same. Stomping up the stairs past Ben and Beverly - forever making cow-eyes at one another in a sickeningly familiar way, while never _actually_ \- he thinks: isn’t it better to die because you made a choice, instead of allowing yourself to be lead to the slaughter? If the outcome is more or less guaranteed either way, at least _this way_ he’ll get a few more years. And maybe even if he leaves, everyone will survive - maybe without him they can still beat the thing. The magic is broken without Stan anyways. Maybe if he leaves, he can just go back to forgetting. All the pain, all the panic, all the bubbling unrequited _feelings_ -

He can’t forget. 

It comes down to loyalty, bone deep, true magic. It comes down to Stan. It all comes down to the fourth pew in the empty synagogue and the realization that dying alone in his penthouse in Chicago in three years time would be misery, misery more plus pure cowardice. If he’s doomed, he thinks, he may as well die alongside the people he loves. 

Because he does love them. That’s what Stan came to remind him.

* * *

In the end it’s God damn motherfucking Bill Denbrough running off in the dead of night to 29 Neibolt, the house with the hollow space under the porch and the punched out hole in the basement. He stands on the porch pulling Richie's heartstrings into a tight knot, evoking a loyalty that spent two decades dormant only to rear its head in time to force him into the bowels of - 

well. Hell. 

Down the Well and into Hell. Through the tunnels, deep then deeper; like the catacombs, littered with bones human and otherwise; he's gripping furiously to the back of Ben’s shirt and then to Eddie’s, water up to his knees and then his chest - and when the moment comes, he’s the one with the hand-tailored rallying words, deeply revealing. The one with the not-so-gentle touch. Unable to stop the love from speaking through him, he’s the one who coaxes Eddie into that dank, dark hole. As good as a firing squad, he’ll think sometime later. 

_You’re braver than you think._ Fucking unbelievable. 

Down and down and down they go. Drenched and stinking like shit and piss they climb onto the Devil’s pedestal and one by one drop their tokens into the little leather sac provided by Mike’s native American friends, chant their little hearts out and get fully fucked into the sun. Again, like 1989, like this entire hellscape vacation, they are running for their lives - it’s all Richie can do to keep Eddie next to him, all pretense gone now that the danger is fucking iminent; the end is severely fucking nigh; it’s boulders from above; it’s keep Eddie alive or bust.

Not Scary. Scary. Very Scary. 

Equipped with his newfound memories, he knows what to expect in the closets - logically, he knows he’s being taunted - still, on every level, he feels panicky and sick with the threat of exposure.

But there’s a moment, just a moment, when he turns and sees Eddie’s eyes not on him but fixed on the dark depth in front of them, clothes swinging off the rack, and before Eddie’s gaze slips over to him and before the fucking nightmare continues, he thinks _oh. Fuck._ Not because Eddie’s seen it, but because Eddie’s looking into the closet like it’s meant for _him_. 

And the nature of the thing is: there’s time to evaluate - they’re running again in a moment, careening into the cistern to discover that the stupid spider looking fucking horror monster thing has a hold of Mike, and Richie skids to a halt in the great hall of the cistern thinking nonsensically, _nuh uh, you fucking skank,_ picks up a fist-sized rock sitting next to his left foot and lobs it, hard as he can, into the air.

“YOU WANNA PLAY TRUTH OR DARE?” He screams, bolstered by the adrenaline boiling his blood, only vaguely aware of Eddie careening out of the tunnels behind him. “HERE'S A TRUTH: YOU’RE A SLOPPY BITCH.”

_Dear God, Dear God, Dear God, Dear fucking -_

“YIPPIE KAY-YAY, MOTHERFU--”

He doesn’t get to finish. _No chucks today_ , he thinks, before his eardrums burst, before - 

A flash. 

_\- and they’re trapped, pinned down by oscillating light, but Eddie saves their lives and then - dies in his arms, his only hand pressed to Richie’s face until the last moment, until he’s gone, and Richie presses trembling lips to his still-warm cheek, and covered in his blood he helps to slay the beast that took from him true love; afterwards, he drapes Eddie’s lifeless body over his shoulders and climbs, in the light of day looks into Eddie’s unseeing eyes and feels the last human thing inside him snap, feels humanity slip from him like water from a beaver’s back, decides in that moment he never wants to see any of them again, and alone he goes home, takes up his role in the hollow play once more, reinvests in the forgetting, in the bottle and the -_

A flash. The moment of suspension before the journey down to the taught black surface of the trampoline and Georgie’s smiling face barely visible over the metal frame, waiting his turn to bounce -

_\- he’s trapped, pinned in the oscillating lights, but Eddie saves his life and then - dies in his arms, his only hand pressed to Richie’s face until the last moment, until he’s gone, and Richie presses trembling lips to his still-warm cheek, and covered in his blood he has to get up and move, has to help his friends, has to climb, has to watch Ben fall into Bev’s arms and has to stop the tidal wave of jealousy, more like a tsunami of pain, and this time he sticks around, dies alone, in the end, anyways, what a surprise -_

A flash. Weightlessness, as if lifted from his skin, as if he’s still laying on the grass outside his college dorm, as if the very first tab of lysergic acid diethylamide has just dissolved into his blood and he’s ready oh he’s ready to remember he’s ready to knock down the door in his mind and find out what’s behind it and why he’s so alone, he’s ready to know, who are those boys in his dreams, oh - 

_\- trapped, pinned in the oscillating lights, but Eddie saves his life and then dies alone in the dark clutching Richie’s jacket to his chest, to the soundtrack of his friends screaming and never knowing how it ends, the story they got trapped in too young, and afterwards Richie's pain never ceases; the clown keeps getting him, day after day even from beyond death, so Richie follows where his best friends have gone, alone as they were, to the soundtrack of the seventh track on The Cure’s_ Wish _in a bathtub to match Stan’s, a coward’s shotgun in the stead of a razor, needing it to be over in an instant -_

A flash. Weightlessness, as though suspended in water, eyes closed, the quarry 1993 with his breath bubbled in his scrawny chest contemplating surrender, contemplating that nails-on-a-chalkboard voice in the recess of his mind that he can’t quite place anymore - 

_\- pinned by the oscillating lights, but Eddie saves his life and doesn’t bleed out until later, until they’ve secured a victory, as they climb back towards the surface, quiet and then quieter and then entirely limp against Richie’s side, and Richie can’t carry him up alone, he’s so sorry, he’s so sorry and he’d rather stay but from behind Mike forces him up and up and Eddie stays down and Richie will never forgive himself or anyone else -_

A flash. Weightlessness, turbulence on his flight from L.A.X to Chicago, which he’d boarded with nothing but utmost confidence, the vague feeling that he is getting closer, the swoop in the stomach only lasting a moment - 

_\- Eddie saves his life and then saves it again, pushing him out of the way at the last moment, too close, pitched against a wall by the thrashing limbs of the Devil himself, the contact a crackling crunch that Richie hears from where he lay sprawled, and Eddie’s already dying as he hits the ground, blood bubbling from his mouth and nose, his body limp and useless; he looks into Richie’s eyes and Richie holds him close, won’t budge when the others have finished, tells them to leave but they don’t listen, stubborn and fighting, they bargain with him as darkness comes down around them all, the jagged rocks building a tomb for six -_

A flash. Weightlessness, the moment before he plummets towards the glistening quarry water below, his friends suspended around him - 

_\- Eddie saves his life and then dies alone in the dark, pressing Richie's jacket to his chest, to the soundtrack of awful curses, his friends chanting clown, clown, clown, never knowing how it ends, all of it, this story they got trapped in so young, so innocent -_

No. He wants a different story. 

“I got some Winston’s,” Richie said, on the day he met Ben Hanscom for real. He knew it only counted once you met someone outside the classroom. “Who wants some?”

He produced a pack from his pocket and offered it around the small circle, five of them sitting in the grass looking pridefully over their freshly constructed dam. Bill and Ben both reached for one but Eddie and Stan said no, just like Richie knew they would, just like he was banking. There were only five cigarettes in the pack, and he wanted to save some for later. 

With a match he lit Ben’s cigarette first, a welcoming gesture, then Bill’s. Bill blew out the match before the flame could meet Richie’s own cigarette. 

“The-The-Three on a mu-mu-hatch,” he said. “B-Bad luh-luh-luck.”

“Bad luck for your folks when you were born,” Richie said, without heat, and lit his cigarette with another match. He lay back on his arms in the grass and tipped his head towards Eddie, who of course was already looking back at him. 

“Winston’s taste good, like a cigarette should.” He winked and Eddie flushed, turning away to look at Ben. “Ain’t that right, Eds?”

_\- they drag him out of the building kicking and screaming, but he hardly remembers the ascent later, only remembers the fighting, remembers in flashes of agonizing technicolour: Eddie’s face as he’d scrambled and ducked through his last hours - that moment on the front yard of that fucking house, before they went in, when they could have still turned back - the feeling of Eddie’s arm in the scared clutch of his hand - Eddie’s head lolling into him, Eddie’s unbreathing mass in his arms, unmistakably dead – then the fighting, and the pain -_

No. A different time. A different place. 

“Oh, FUCK!” Richie yelled as Beverly went whistling through the air to the quarry water below. “We just got showed up by a girl!” 

Behind him, Stan let out a short and characteristic exhale, not quite a sigh. “Do we have to do that now?” 

“What the fuck did you think we were here to do, Stanley, watch the fuckin’ sunset?” Richie asked. He peered over the cliff and down at the rippling water where Beverly had landed, her red hair glinting in the sun. 

“Come on, you babies!” She called up, waving an arm at them. 

Ben sprang suddenly into motion at her cajoling, two quick steps back and then a one-two hop towards and over the edge of the cliff. Richie watched him rocket down to the water’s surface and heard Beverly’s bright laughter as he landed closeby, heaving waves over her. Together they began to swim away, making room for the others.

“Luh-luh-last one down is a ruh-rotten egg,” Bill said, and followed Ben. 

Not to be outdone, Richie began to move. He backed up a half meter, already anticipating what he’d holler as he went. Before he could begin his sprint, Eddie moved to stand in front of him, blocking his path. 

“Richie! Stop!” 

“You heard the man, Eds!” Richie said, using the British Guy’s Voice. “Out the way, chap, pip-pip!”

Eddie reacted as he often did: with a roll of his eyes that seemed to rock his entire body. Stanley stood just to the side of him, his face set into a slight frown. 

“Your glasses, dumbass, take them off or you’re going to lose them in the water and we’ll have to spend all afternoon looking for them cause you’re blind as a fucking bat.” 

Sometimes Richie thought Eddie cared more about the safety of his spectacles than anyone else in the world, bitching as he always was about the ways they’d be broken or smudged. It was kind of annoying, but kind of nice. After making careful note of his path Richie removed them from his face tossed them in the direction of his shirt and pants, making a face at Eddie as the world fuzzed over. The blurry shape of Eddie cleared the path with a distinct huff, and Richie geared up. 

“YeaAAAHHHHH,” he bellowed, and hit the water. 

Even in the heat of the afternoon, it was jarringly cold. He floated, blissful under the water for a few moments - then surfaced, dripping and grinning and blind, to the jeers of Bill, Ben, and Beverly. Hardly a moment later Eddie and Stan came plummeting from the cliff, landing dangerously close to him. Together, as though they'd held hands when they'd jumped.

“Two rotten eggs for the price of one,” Richie said when they surfaced closeby, using the British Man’s Voice again.

_\- after the house collapses on top of their friend there is giggling in the quarry, the sound of laughter now repellent and vulgar to the jester himself - there is otherworldly and unspeakable pain on the walk back to the townhouse, and then there is whiskey, a dark deep abyss-_

No. Something other than the pain, he wants something else. He reaches for it.

“How do you do, Mrs. Uris, and may I say you are looking lovely on this fine evening. Is your son home?” Richie asked as the impressive mahogany door swung open. 

Stanley’s mother appraised him with lips pursed, checking him for mud and filth. Nevermind the fact that he was almost a grown man, or that it had been years since any of them had played in the dirt - she seemed forever convinced that Richie was going to track something unsavoury onto her floors. Once satisfied that he hadn’t taken any recent mud-baths, she gave him a curt smile and opened the door wider, calling over her shoulder into the house. 

“Stanley! Richard is here for you!” She turned back to Richie. “Come wait in the foyer.”

He did as he was told, listening to the squawking of the television in the drawing room where Rabbi Uris was surely sat, and to the unmistakable sound of Stanley moving overhead. His room was at the front of the house, with a view of the driveway, directly atop the foyer where Richie now stood. After a short minute Stanley appeared at the top of the stairs.

“I thought you said you were grounded,” he said, without descending. Richie knew well enough that Stanley wouldn’t come down until he knew Richie hadn’t snuck out or otherwise secured his freedom with mischief. He’d years ago decided that he was tired of getting into trouble for Richie’s entertainment.

“Went relented when the garage was done,” Richie said, twirling an invisible lasso over his head. Mrs. Uris had receded to the kitchen. Richie made like he was tossing the lasso up the stairs. “Come on down here, you wet end, we’re gonna meet Eddie at the farm. Mike’s got the afternoon off.” 

Stanley peered down at him from the landing, measured and even, but Richie could see a smile cloying beneath his schooled expression. He began to tug on the invisible rope. 

“Are you lying to me, Richie?” 

"No, Stan, I promise."

_\- he remembers only enough off the following forty-eight hours to be vaguely embarrassed for a while, to know that he’s passed beyond any shadow of a doubt in the eyes of his friends - they are kind to him, they try, for him, they never mention it - for years they don’t mention it, the not-so-secret still burning a hole through the center of him-_

No, no, not that. 

"I'm glad I got to meet you before you died," Richie said, somewhat lamely. 

From his heavy seat on the Keene's milk crate Ben peered up at him, not laughing. Though woven through with uneasiness, his expression lacked the frustrated exasperation with which the general public of Derry regarded him. He looked up with curiousity, with a little bit of something else - it was the something else that interested Richie. He thought that this Ben fellow had a certain shine about him, in almost the same way Bill, Stan, and Eddie did. Like he hadn't yet decided what he was looking at, when he looked at Richie Tozier. 

"I don't think I'm going to die." He said.

"Not with Eddie around, you won't." Richie replied. "The kid's a disinfectant savant."

_\- after the day that Eddie and the monster both die, Richie looks back on his past self and thinks: let the demon have his reign, you stupid fucking mortal, do you have any idea the cost of being a hero? The price is too high!_

Some other place.

“Who’s ready to get wrecked?” Richie asked in the Macho-Man’s Voice, faking like he was pushing back sleeves he didn’t have. He made to grab the ball and jacks up from the well-worn wooden floor of the Denbrough’s basement. In the background, the TV crooned the credit score to _The Sound of Music_ \- Ben’s pick for movie night. 

“ _NO_ , Richie!” Eddie screeched and smacked the jacks from his hand, which sent them scattering across the floor. “You swore you’d bike back with me, and if we don’t leave now I’m gonna be late. You know how my mom is.” 

Out of the corner of his eye Richie saw Beverly roll her eyes in Bill’s direction, and felt oddly betrayed by Bill's answering smirk. He stood, suddenly self conscious. 

“Alright, alright, Eddie-bear, don’t get your panties in a twist -”

“Do _not_ fucking call me that, you fucking asswipe, I will shove my entire foot down your throat if you don’t get going right fucking now-”

“Ah, Eds, you know I live to cater to Derry’s most over-parented midget -”

" _Fuck_ you!"

Richie laughed, a little hysterically. "No thanks, you're not my type."

_\- he thinks: you were always so good at running away, except the one time you should have - he thinks: we should have left, I should have taken Eddie and gone when we wanted, consequences be damned, at least we would have stayed together, Eddie would still be here if – if only I’d told him - if only I’d moved - if only I’d pulled him close to me - if-_

Another time.

“What was that ritual you told us about, Big Bill?” Richie asked, peering past him out of the pipe’s end and towards the ladder, waiting for Henry to try the descent a third time. There was a strange film left on his teeth from biting his ankle; it had seemed like a good idea in the moment, but now he somewhat regretted it. He ran his tongue over his top front teeth - the ones that had earned him the nickname Bucky Beaver - and shuddered. 

He may have imagined it, but he thought Eddie scooched a bit closer to him, just then.

“Chüd,” Bill answered, smiling a little.

“Chüd,” Richie repeated, nodding. Stanley was beginning to shake his head slowly where he stood against the curved cement wall. Mike was standing next to him, his face grisly and intent. “You bite Its tongue and It bites yours, right?”

“Ruh-ruh-right.”

“Then you tell jokes?”

Bill nodded. 

“Funny,” Richie said around the lump growing in his throat. He turned finally, looking into the dark pipe laid out behind the seven of them. The only way out was down. “I can’t think of a single one.”

_\- he thinks: did I learn anything? do I believe in the Goodness of Grace and the Power of Love? he thinks that the only compelling argument he’s heard is for unrestrained horror - for Pain that will chase you for the first forty years of your life, even if you don’t realize it - especially then - and when you finally turn to look it in the eye it will meet you - it will call you a winner - it will haunt you for the next forty anyways; and haunt him it does-_

No. Another time. 

“Hey, Eds?”

Sitting across the room, at the same desk he’d had since they were eleven, Eddie looked up. His eyes were dark. He'd become increasingly serious over the last couple of years, as boyhood fell away and they eased towards maturity. These days he was less manic. These days he was mostly tense.

“Hm?”

Through the open window behind him the sounds of the dwindling summer bled into the room. The sun was setting. Cicadas called a plaintive cry. Lonesome. 

Soon they’d both be gone from this place, for good. Separate. The thought had been plaguing Richie like an illness for weeks. 

“What, Richie?”

He sat, looking, for a moment more. His throat was dry. 

“I fucked your mother.” 

_\- the pain follows him through the drinking, the anger, the bits of healing spread over long years, which are interspersed with a powerful disinterest in everything - even through the loving, once it finds him again, woven into his DNA as it is to love the ones left alive - years and years away from that day, the comfort of numbness settles over him the way darkness settles over the bar, the staff dimming the lights little by little, imperceptible until you realise you can barely see - in the best of times he is only barely feeling, he prefers it that way -_

No. He wants something better. He searches for it. 

“HO-ly shit, does this work!?” Richie crowed, with genuine awe. He was circling the old golf-cart in Mike’s garage like a rabid dog. At the door, Mike shrugged.

"It did once, but I'm pretty sure the motors shot. My grandfather used it to chase off the geese, back in the day."

Richie laughed loudly, truly thrilled by the thought. "Gee whiz," he said, then said it again. "Gee whiz. How come you never told us about this, Mikey, you been holdin' out!"

Above him, the curious heads of Bill and Eddie poked over the ledge of the hayloft, where they had been nosing around. The both of them liked ladders, and climbing, but Richie felt he was rather too uncoordinated for things like that.

"Sorry, I guess," Mike said amicably. "I didn't realize you'd want a full catalogue of all the broken shit on the farm."

"You think we could fix her up, Mike?" Eddie called down. Richie could tell by his tone that he was excited, and met his eye briefly as he dangled off the hayloft into open air. 

Mike considered, then said quite reasonably, "I suppose if you were to help me, Eds, we might be able to figure it out." 

"Oh, cripes," Richie said, and put a hand on the golf cart's hood. "The amounta poon-tang we could coralle with this baby. Astronomical." 

_-the technicolour flashes follow him all his life, and other memories, chestnut eyes in the summertime - he serves his sentence, marches himself towards the place that they will all eventually go, the place where Eddie Kaspbrak is, where Stanley Uris is - but it’s Bill who gets there first, unexpected and sudden - a reminder so pointed that Richie almost has to laugh - a funeral, a reunion, a couple hours spent thinking about the dead and the long-dead, a couple more spent thinking about the inevitable end of their own days - seventy years old, after holding it in for decades, Richie says to his three remaining friends: you people have always acted as though beating the Devil makes you exempt from death; at least Bill gets a funeral, right? and though he expects it to feel cathartic the sound of it is repellent to his own ears, a voice of reproach missing in the empty air that follows -_

Another time, another place.

“You don’t really want to go in there, do you?” Richie asked. He was almost pleading.

“Nuh-nuh-no,” Bill said, “b-but I’m gonna.”

Moved by the twisted logic of a child, Bill marched forwards towards the Well House, his father’s pistol a visible bulge in his duffel coat pocket. He walked to the right hand end of the porch, where the panelling was torn off, and squatted down to look into the opening. This must have been where Eddie saw his leper, Richie thought. Where he crawled in. Squatting in the dead grass behind Bill, peering into the darkness, he felt his chest constrict. It was as though he could sense the warm breath of something Evil on his cheeks, exhaling from the basement window. 

“Bill,” he said. 

“What?” 

Bill was loading the gun, ready to slay the beast, to reclaim some sort of comfort. It occurred to Richie then that Bill was becoming a man in front of him, this summer one long Bar Mitzvah. He watched, fascinated, as the bullets went in one by one, until the chamber was loaded with four. Then he looked back at the grass under the porch, littered with glass. He wasn’t a stupid boy. He knew what it meant that the glass had busted outwards. 

When Richie didn’t answer, Bill looked up from the Walther with an expression of grim determination. 

“Wh-What?”

“Nothing.”

_-Bill first, and Ben an uneventful decade later, another funeral, another reunion, the dwindling of their numbers nipping at their souls, now, a lesson delivered in equal weight to all those left alive to have learned it - true love does not conquer that final villain, we are not exempt - Mike goes soon enough, after that, another funeral and back to the kitchen they share for quiet cups of tea, the two of them - Richie begins to wonder at eighty-seven, tired, whether this long life is the punchline for a joke that is folded seven ways, which their Good God, fuck Him very much, starting setting up millenia ago - or whenever it was that their fates had been determined -_

No, he doesn't want it to go like this. No. 

“Watchoo say, Eddie? Watchoo say, boy?” Richie asked mightily in his Southern Gentleman Voice, as Eddie ran - though his run was more of a jobbly-march - to catch up with them. The Southern Gentleman was one of Richie’s favourite and best Voices, practiced usually in front of the TV during Saturday morning cartoons. “Ah say… the boy’s got a broken ahm! Lookit that, Stan, the boy’s got a broken ahm! Ah say… be a good spote and carreh the boy’s Pawcheeseh bo-wud for him!” 

He would of course have taken the board from beneath Eddie’s good arm and carried it himself, if he hadn’t thought that would be too obvious. Eddie rolled his eyes as he ambled to a halt. 

“I can carry it,” he said, slightly out of breath. “How about a lick on your Rocket?”

In a subdued panic Richie began to eat the treat faster, trying to devour the chocolatey insides before Eddie could press him. 

“Your mom wouldn't approve, Eddie,” he intoned with put-upon remorse. Eddie seemed unconvinced, so he continued. “Germs, boy! Ah say you kin get germs eatin’ after someone else!” 

“I’ll chance it,” Eddie said stubbornly, forcing Richie to hold out his Rocket so that he could get a few licks in. One, two, and Richie yanked his arm back, trying not to think on it too hard. Stanley was looking at him strange, the way he often did. 

“You can have the rest of mine, if you want,” Stan said to Eddie. “I’m still full from lunch”

“Jews don’t eat much,” Richie said quickly. He licked his Rocket, his tongue passing over the same place Eddie’s had just moments ago. “It’s part of their religion.” 

Stan’s Rocket exchanged hands, becoming Eddie’s. He held it with the hand of his broken arm, pinched between his middle finger and thumb, which jutted furthest out from the plaster. The town was utterly deserted as the three of them walked on towards the Barrens to meet up with the others. There were no other kids playing in the streets, not a single adult doing yard work.

“Is it?” Eddie asked Stan earnestly. In the distance, gentle thunder murmured a promise.

“No, Richie’s just pulling your leg,” Stan said with slight annoyance. “Jews eat as much as normal people. Like him.” 

“You know, you’re pretty fucking mean to Stan,” Eddie told Richie. Richie felt the immutable urge to laugh, and so he did. “How would you like somebody to say all that made-up shit about you, just because you’re Catholic?” 

“Oh, Catholics do plenty,” Richie told him, then moved closer to nudge an elbow into his ribs. He couldn’t help himself. The elbow didn’t make contact, knocking against Eddie’s Parcheesi board instead. Eddie cast him a glance. “My dad told me once that Hitler was a Catholic, and Hitler killed billions of Jews. Right, Stan?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Stan said. His strange look had subsided, replaced with one like embarrassment. He didn’t like to talk about being a Jew. Richie The Mouth carried on heedlessly. 

“My mom was furious when my dad told me that,” he said, grinning. “Absolutely fyoo-rious. Us Catholics also had the Inquisition, that was the little dealie with the rack and the thumbscrews and all that stuff. I figure all religions are pretty weird.”

_-eighty-nine years old, and does he fucking believe in magic? is there a God and will He fold Richie into His everlasting arms - he has to decide, as Death approaches him, will there be an afterlife in which to bask, at the end of all things, and has he learned anything about the nature of existence except that maybe Fate lives - or has lived - unbeholden to the wants of man?_

The lights are still oscillating. He wants to go back. 

_-the only compelling arguments he’s heard are for complete happenstance and unrestrained horror, for short brief sparks of light in otherwise dark places, none yet for eternal light - in his life he only ever held something truly good once, and not for very long before it went cold - almost fifty years after watching the house collapse from the front lawn, fifty years away from the only meaningful thing he’s ever done, after an unfulfilling career and a lifetime of faking, after all the work he’s put in and the equal amount he has neglected to, after articulating and apologizing and making what little peace he could, after everything he’s seen and done and endured -_

Something good. Please.

“I bet you’ll be the only person to ever live in New York without getting lost once,” Richie said. 

Beneath his bluster, his voice sounded hollow. He hoped that Eddie couldn’t hear it, but the _feelings_ were so powerful that he wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of radiation coming off of him, beaming right out of his chest and into the open air. 

He hoped, anyways, because Eddie would be leaving in the morning, and he didn’t want to make things weird right before he was gone. 

Eddie looked glum himself. They were sitting on a boulder, just slightly downstream from the spot where they’d first met Mike. That afternoon seemed a million years ago, now, or at least much longer than four years. Briefly Richie considered picking up the fist-sized rock by his left sneaker and lobbing it hard as he could across the narrow stream. He let the urge pass; it was futile, anyways. What was done was done. There was nothing left to fight for, now. For now.

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “Maybe I will. I’ve never even been there before.”

Richie let out a hearty guffaw. “Bullshit, Eds,” he said, with false cheer. “You’ve never been lost a day in your life.” 

For a long time Eddie didn’t speak, and Richie began to wonder if he’d said something wrong without realizing. He did that, from time to time. Eventually Eddie sighed and turned his head away so that he was speaking upstream. 

“I dunno,” he said again. His voice was small. “Sometimes I do feel pretty lost.”

Something shifted between them, then, and Richie felt himself fill suddenly to the brim with electric fear. _No,_ he thought passionately, _we aren’t supposed to talk about it._ He opened his mouth to make a joke but then Eddie turned to face him again. His honey-brown eyes were wet, his lips pressed into a hard line.

“Richie,” he said, almost a whisper. He’d never said Richie’s name quite like that before. “I have to say something. I think you might hate me afterwards but I think I - I gotta say it anyways-”

“You don’t gotta say anythin’, Eds,” Richie said, his voice a croak. What he meant to say was that he could never hate Eddie, not in a million years, but his heart was throwing itself against the inside of his chest as though trying to escape. He thought wildly that he could relate, that he ought to get up and book it out of there right now, before someone did something stupid.

“I do,” Eddie insisted, a spark of his usual fire and fury. “I do gotta say it, and more than that I _want_ to! Cause I - I might not get another chance. And anyways, I think you know, already…” He took a great, shuddering breath. “You know that I - mmph!”

Richie did know, of course, what Eddie was going to say - but what Richie knew even better was that he couldn’t bear to hear it, and moreso that it was dangerous for either of them to say it out loud at all. So on instinct, to stop him saying it, Richie pitched forward and kissed him. He meant to pull away a second later, but Eddie wouldn’t let him. He pressed their lips together once more with some urgency, hands fisting in the front of Richie’s old _Ramones_ T-shirt. The angle was strange. Richie had to brace himself with his elbows locked and his fingers spread wide beneath him in order to bridge the distance. When Eddie tugged on his shirt to bring him closer he almost slid entirely off the rock. 

Finally, what felt like a millenia later, they broke apart. Richie’s glasses had been knocked saskew on his nose during the proceedings, and he felt punch drunk. It had been his first kiss. He knew, in the way best friends know things, that it had been Eddie’s too. They looked at one another, their faces only inches apart and the both of them breathing heavily, until something began crackling in the bushes behind them; then like startled rabbits they straightened up and turned back towards the stream. It seemed somehow different to what it had been before. After a few minutes the crackling in the woods stopped - likely a chipmunk happily finding its next burrow - but neither of them moved or spoke for a long time after. 

“So you do know,” Eddie said at last. “I was beginning to wonder if I was crazy.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. He was unable to keep himself from smiling, despite the ache which continued to bloom in his chest. “Of course I know, Eds. And… well, I mean… you aren't crazy.” 

_-he expects the end to come as a relief, but when Death extends it’s withered hand, the fear finds him again - the emptiness opens up before him, and he is afraid of it -_

_I don’t want to go, he thinks, Who will look after Beverly? Too, one of the last things before he does go, he thinks -_

_I hope Eddie will be there_.

A flash. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank u for reading the beginning of what is planned to be a slow-going 70k of extremely off the rails post-ch2 trauma, recovery, love, roadtripping, and making of ones own happy endings.


End file.
